Impact social

First, we are so excited and honored to let you know that Getting Free was picked as a finalist for the Signal Awards, one of the biggest podcast awards in the country.

We are a finalist in the Activism, Public Service, and Social Impact category, and we need your help.

From now until Thursday, October 15th, you can vote for Getting Free in the Listeners' Choice Awards.

Voting is free.

My name is John Gilroy, and I'll be your moderator.

Our guest in the virtual studio today is Reggie Towson, Vice President, AI Ethics, Governance, and Social Impact at SAS.

Reggie, how are you? I'm

doing well.

We're running out of time here, Reggie.

You have been listening to the Federal Tech Podcast with John Gilroy.

I'd like to thank my guest, Reggie Townsend, Vice President, AI Ethics, Governance, and Social Impact at SAS.

Thanks, Reggie.

In today's business landscape, companies are increasingly expected to go beyond profitability.

Stakeholders, from clients and partners to employees and consumers, demand authenticity, ethical practices, a sense of belonging, and measurable social impact.

Financial performance alone is no longer enough to define success.

Brands are now evaluated by the values they represent and the positive impact they generate.

Unlike mass-produced promotional items that are quickly forgotten, handcrafted pieces tend to be cherished, displayed, and remembered.

They create lasting impressions and foster emotional attachment, reinforcing brand recall while simultaneously communicating respect for craftsmanship and cultural heritage.

Social Impact as Brand Differentiation By choosing handcrafted pieces, companies actively support fair trade practices, preserve ancestral techniques, and contribute to local economic development.

This is not a symbolic gesture.

Alright, let's get into the papers with measuring what matters or what can be measured.

Social Impact is Sense-Making, by Heidi Meierleinen, Cristina Brasila-Meltavara, and Eva Zebright, a 2026 conference paper about social impact reports as stories organizations build, not neutral scorecards they simply fill in.

The plain point is that impact measurement is often meaning making first and counting second, and in their close read of public impact communications from three hybrid companies, meaning companies that mix a social mission with market activity, the numbers tended to highlight discrete outcomes while the messy relational, process-based, and long-term impacts showed up more as language around the numbers.

So how would we know whether an organization measured the real impact, rather than the impact that was easiest to report, especially if the evidence is the public-facing version they chose to publish?

That's exactly the pressure point, because the authors use qualitative analysis, meaning a structured close reading, across three phases, how the companies define social impact, how they argue for those definitions, and which parts become measurable or reportable, so this is strongest as a warning about measurement logic in three cases, not a universal map of every hybrid organization.

The practical takeaway is almost brutally simple.

If you're designing an impact metric, document what it leaves out as clearly as what it counts, because this lands right in the what counts as impact thread where the definition can tilt the result before the dashboard ever opens.